Magic isn’t real, but people have believed it to be, and that makes quite a difference. For instance, at the seventeenth-century French court of Louis XIV, social anxiety among aristocrats jockying for power led to a tense and violent use of magic, fortune-telling, Black Masses, and secetive murders. Over 400 people were implicated in “L’affaire de poisons.” An example of the deadly plots engulfing the French court included the use of “inheritance powders” whose main ingredients were dried toads and arsenic. Thirty-six people were executed in the scandal before the king put an end to the investigation: his own mistress, Athenais de Montspan, was implicated for using aphrodisiacs and even attempted regicide through poisoning. Louis XIV had stopped the immediate threats to his power, and realized the connections went through too vast a network for him to contain had he continued to publicly seek out all the participants.
Source(s): Image is from Claude Paradin, _Devises Heroiques_, 1573. Also see _Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV’s France_ by Lynn Mollenauer.
